


Mistaken Identity

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: Batman (Comics), Highlander: The Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-03
Updated: 2008-06-03
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “You were expecting someone else, weren’t you?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistaken Identity

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Mistaken Identity  
>  **Fandom:** Batman/Highlander crossover  
>  **Pairing:** none  
>  **Character(s):** Batman (gee, wonder which of those fandoms he’s from!), Amanda  
>  **Rating:** Maybe R, but only for mild violence and slightly dirty thoughts  
>  **Word count:** 2,070  
>  **Warnings:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. I’ve borrowed my toys from Davis/Panzer and DC Comics for non-profiting entertainment purposes only. Promise.  
> 

The night air smells like wet asphalt and heat. It slams into Amanda like a damp wall as she rushes past the roof access door; it clings to the short spikes of dark hair that the stocking cap doesn’t hide and brings her up suddenly short and winded - and after only thirty flights of stairs, too. “Can’t be getting that over the hill or out of shape yet,” she says to herself as she pushes through the damp air to lean on a ledge and stare down at the city below. “Eleven hundred isn’t even middle aged.”

The roof is darker than when she’d snuck in only an hour earlier and she has to squint to see shapes moving along the sidewalk. In the meantime, that tricky in-between time where she loses track of seconds only in the most abstract of ways, thick clouds had blotted out the moon and every single star; a thick haze hangs over every street lamp and neon marquee now and pushes the ambient light into the concrete below. An angry, gray ceiling had grown over the sky and threatens to burst open at any moment to douse the city in a cool, cleansing rain. No matter how big the storm, though, Amanda doubts it could wash the city clean.

Nights like tonight, she looks over her shoulder and expects to see MacLeod standing there, wearing that familiar expression of displeasure. But she doesn't find him there, never finds him there anymore. He only followed her so far before he got tired of the chase. And she never can stay put for long, no matter the temptation, no matter the promise or the lure. If she stands still too long, her feet will take root and she might discover she likes it.

“I don’t think that belongs to you.”

She feels the words before she hears them, before the sound registers past ears attuned to the heavy quiet. They are an exhale of hot breath against her neck, a deep rumble of something part growl and part tease close to her ear. The sudden, unmistakable presence of a warm body at her back, solid and unequivocally male, sends goose bumps up her arms and a rush of molten heat into her veins. She nearly drops the bag of loot at the sudden, heady rush of it all.

A smile half-parts her lips, words formed in response and waiting just on the other side of her teeth, when she freezes. The pitch is too low and the generic American timbre of the accent too bland. And, she can say without bragging, MacLeod couldn’t get that close without the warning bells going off, welcome or not.

That the welcome is debatable at the time isn’t important, initial response not withstanding.

“I said,” comes the voice again, this time closer to her ear, “I don’t think that belongs to you.”

Her fist clenches at her side and her elbow tenses. She doesn’t look back to evaluate her opponent, to size him up and look for weak spots. He’s too close and she has the sneaking suspicion he thinks she’s someone else. She can tell how tall he is, how big he is, just by the feel of him behind her, the amount of him mantling nearly over her and around her. Can guess where his ribs are, where his knees are, what angle she’d need to use to jab her elbow into his stomach and her fist into his…

“You know what they say, darling.” A cruel grin cuts across her face as she leans into his unyielding bulk. Her boot heel finds the edge of his shoe where it hits the rooftop behind her and her knee tenses. “Finders keepers,” she utters in the second before her knee comes up and her reinforced heel slams down onto his foot; in the split second before her elbow connects with something solid where the intruder’s midsection should be. The shape behind her steps back in surprise, shock maybe, and she ducks beneath the arm that swings out to snag her. One smooth somersault later and she’s behind him, crouched low to the ground with a hand poised to reach for a sword she doesn’t have.

Hotel. She left it at the fucking hotel.

Her adversary turns, a mass of shadow blocking what little light breaches the haze to cast an odd glow on the scene. A long cape billows behind him like liquid, catching a breeze she hadn’t felt before. He exists only as an absence of light, a black blot against a dark gray landscape broken only by two piercing eyes whose gaze she can feel burning clear into her soul. She doesn’t need to see the emblem across his chest to know who the shadow man with the inhuman silhouette is. She's been in Gotham less than a week, but even she's heard the rumors about the Batman. In 1,100 years, she's heard every Boogeyman story that's ever been told. That's why she didn't believe this one.

Re-evaluating that disbelief, now. As if she’s got room to doubt that weird things do exist.

“You were expecting someone else, weren’t you?” Amanda stays crouched while he stands unmoving three feet away, full of menace and warning. A lesser woman would be intimidated; not her. Lesser women didn’t have nine lives and more than a millennia’s worth of experience that taught them two simple bits of logic: that the bigger they are, the harder they fall and that a man’s greatest enemy is his own libido. These two lessons, discovered through trial and error, are the main reasons she still has a head attached to her shoulders. Are the only reason she’s still grinning through his imposing glare.

“Drop the bag.” Gone from his voice is the silky tease she heard earlier, the subtle heat underlying such simple words. The baritone is still as deep, still as rich, but the only thing laying beneath it now is ice.

“Come and get it,” she quips, jiggling the bag in invitation. Over the rustle of colliding gems she hears the familiar “sching” of metal being unsheathed and again thinks of and longs for her blade. Double-edged, razor sharp, the broadsword would have been better defense against the sleek black slice of dread that flew from Batman’s hand than her arm turns out to be. The impact jolts the bag from her hand and leaves everything below her elbow throbbing. Gloved fingers come back dark and wet when they brush over the center of the dull throb, where the object sliced across her skin. Hard, fast, and sharp.

She looks up, opens her mouth to shout, and he’s already there, inches from her with a quick hand reaching for her injured arm. Before she can process the appropriate reaction he has her by the wrist, has her arm twisted and pinned behind her back. Too fast for a mortal, she thinks, but any thought deeper than that is driven out of her head when her cheek is shoved into unyielding brick. He’s at her back again, but different. His grip on her wrist is rough and his body is tense as steel everywhere it touches hers. Her gloved fingers, smashed between her back and his stomach, find only solid body armor and she wonders how he felt so warm and welcoming before.

Nothing but cold steel, even in his voice.

“Don’t,” he says when her fingers flex and poke at the cold barrier of his chest plate. He keeps her pinned with his weight and the pressure on her arm; his other hand is elsewhere. She discovers a second later where it had been: fiddling with that legendary utility belt of his in search of a zip-tie he was looping around her trapped wrist.

“Or what?” Already, Amanda could feel the cut closing on her arm, the bruises and swelling healing where the batarang had struck. She shakes her free arm and feels the climbing spike she’d hurriedly tucked into her sleeve slip into her hand; then she grins against the cool brick. “I’m sure you’ve got a busy schedule to keep, fighting crime and what not, and I’ve got a plane to catch myself, so why don’t we leave the ‘Taking you downtown’’s and ‘Crime doesn’t pay’’s just this side of implied. Work for you?”

Before the Bat can answer, while he’s reaching for her free wrist, she uses her feet to push off the wall and force all her weight back into him. He stumbles. His sure footing fails him when his foot hits the bag he was so intent she drop just moments before, sending him back first onto the rooftop. The jolt knocks his grip on her hand loose and gives her all the opportunity she needs to roll, to pin him to the ground while he’s disoriented and trying to catch back the breath the impact drove from his lungs. While he’s still off his game, she drives the spike through the twisted corner of his cape nearest his head and straight into the rooftop below deep enough to give her all she needs: a few seconds head start.

“I’d love to stay and chat, maybe see what’s under all that body armor and whether you’re Batman or Batboy, but as I said, I’ve got a plane to catch.” She slides to her feet with a quick, fluid motion and brushes the roof dust from her knees. “If I’m ever in Gotham again, I’ll be sure to stop by and say hello.”

Amanda can hear fabric tear as he struggles to get loose; hear his grunts as he tries to wrestle the spike from the roof. He’s working it loose faster than she anticipated and for a second she contemplates sticking around to watch. But she knows that look, the cold, determined one he’s giving her as he struggles, as he rips the fabric that much more, as he pries the spike free a millimeter at a time. The look is trouble, and not the kind she’d enjoy. No, she doubts he’ll settle for taking her over his knee and giving her the spanking she likely deserves. That look says “Run now if you want to keep your head on your shoulders and your butt out of jail.”

While she still has the benefit of that head start she bends to pick up the bag and backs quickly toward the far ledge. There, hidden behind innocuous garbage and litter, she finds the single-occupant glider her connection hid for her. She carefully unfolds the wings and find the harness and makes quick work of slipping the latter on without dwelling too long on how insubstantial it all looks. Simple, rudimentary, but it should be sound enough. And, if it isn’t, it’s not like the fall will kill her. Not permanently.

She hears a loud rip from behind her and turns just as the wind tries to catch the wings. Batman, his cape tattered and hanging in two jagged-cut pieces, stares at her for a split second before he charges at her like an enraged bull. Amanda forgets the original plan, how she meant to cautiously test the structural integrity of the glider before taking her leap of faith, and dives over the roof’s ledge. The wind tugs at the wings like they’re caught on a hook before lifting her like a dandelion fluff and then she’s soaring several hundred feet above terra firma.

She turns to look back at her adversary, perhaps to laugh and gloat, perhaps just to watch him disappear into the distance. The second she turns, however, something zips out from the vicinity of the roof. Metal tines sink into the bag clipped to her harness and she sees a line stretching back from her goody bag to the man on the roof. It’s just a half-second’s thought as the line stretches closer and closer to taut, the loot versus apprehension, before she reaches for the clip and hits the release.

Two million in diamonds upend over the streets of Gotham. Glittering rain spills out beneath her and Amanda almost cries.

But she consoles herself with the fact some over-ambitious hero with a rodent complex will be wrestling gemstones away from bystanders all night long. Always a bright side, she thinks as she gently turns the glider west, toward an abandoned car and salvation.


End file.
